Another brick bat for the Labour Dictatorship

One of the things we love about traveling through Singapore is that you can transit within Chanai Airport without going through customs. This contrasts with the pain of having to get visas and go through customs when we travel through China.

It is therefore upsetting to read the following in the NZ Herald this morning....

Passengers transitting in NZ to require visas
3:43PM Wednesday March 26, 2008

The Government is changing the rules for passengers in transit through New Zealand.

Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove says as of Friday, transit visas will be needed for all people travelling via New Zealand, unless they are specifically exempted by immigration policy.

He says the change is due to increased security requirements and changing travel patterns.

Mr Cosgrove says the new policy will strengthen risk management and future proof border control.

This of course will necessitate more customs officials, make lines longer at customs and move NZ further away from being a civilized, non-paranoid country like Singapore and into the camp of over-the-top, security obsessed, government-with-its-beak-into-everything countries like the US and China. Of course we can expect nothing else from a government that is making Rob Muldoon look decidedly non-interventionist.

Test of Internet Speed

This is a SpeedTest of my internet connection. It should be 10Mbit/2Mbit.

Easter Monday

Yesterday Katya was adamant that she was not going to sleep. She missed her morning nap and her after lunch nap. But she was really really tied. The swing got her. Slowly as the swing slowed her head dropped forward. I managed to unhook the swing and rest it here. 30min later... she was a new person.

Katya's Big Eat

Katya likes big things like water-melon and CHOCOLATE!!!

A visit from a friend

A friend and former neighbour, Chris Burton came to visit. He is in WLG for a week leading a Student Life team.

He has changed a bit... especially after being Front Rowed

No more ASB

Today marked the end of our involvement with ASB. I moved to ASB in my second year of university. That was over 15 years ago. At that stage ASB was expanding out of its base in Auckland and becoming a nation wide bank. They were very customer focused and were well worth the inconvenience of having to go into central Hamilton to do any banking (I lived in Hamilton East at the time).
Unfortunately ASB has become like all the big banks and now more similar to Westpac in its customer service (ie. it completely sux).
I think where banks go wrong is that they have a very perverse view of how much money they should make. Banking is a very low risk business wen you get to the size of the big banks. They look at their total portfolio and apply a percentage to that and that determines what they should make as profit.
If they behaved like most businesses, they should look at their owner equity and work out a return on that.
Because banks try to generate such high profits, they rip off the NZ consumer.
Anyway... after my run in with ASB's lack of customer focus I have voted with my feet and gone to KiwiBank. I would encourage any one else who has bad customer service to take their custom elsewhere. This is the only way big organisations will learn.

Photo Booth is cool

One of the new things I got with my new MAC is Photo Booth. It is what it says... a photo booth. But it has all kinds of freaky effects.

Like...

My PowerBook is for sale!!!

Check out the listing on TradeMe...

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=144563572

www.toshcomputers.com

There is a local Apple seller called toshcomputers. They import Apples from the USA and offer much better prices. They seem to have very good feedback.

I bought some RAM and software off them for my new MacBook. One of the RAM boards did not work. They asked me to do a little diagnostic work. Once I had identified that it was just one board that did not work, they replaced it without any fuss. Very very good customer service.

So the big thumbs up to www.toshcomputers.com and the Sym recommendation.

A rough night

Last night we had a rough night with Katya waking up and not wanting to sleep.

Today while playing with her I figured out why. She has two molars and one bottom teeth coming through all at once!!!

That makes nine teeth, up from her six that she had until a few days ago.

It probably also explains why she went a bit off her food.

Katya Gardener (opps Gardiner)

Katya wanted to help Claire in the garden. She made her own little pile of stones and pulled out some green plant matter.

New MacBook fix - No more "suicide wrists"

My new MacBook has a major fault. The edges where your wrists rest are razor sharp. On the forums this is referred to the suicide wrist feature.

There were three recommended fixes:

1. Grizzle like mad at Apple
2. Use Acetone to melt the plastic into a round edge
3. Get some very fine sand paper and round off the edges.

I chose number three. I have used a white sand paper. I used a strip and held either end and sanded while pulling it around the edge.

The result is a smooth edge although it is slightly discoloured... basically it is matt instead of glossy but you have to hold it up close to notice this.

One point to note... don't be afraid to sand hard if you have very fine paper. The plastic is very very strong.

Basically you are just adding a couple of year's wear to the edges and that is ok.

WARNING: I guess if you typed properly this would not be an issue. But many of is do not type properly.

Vegetarian Cannelloni

This is the first recipe I have posted but it is a complete winner.

You need:

1 Packet of cannelloni
1 tub of cream cheese
1 head of silverbeet
1 small packet of cashew nuts
2 jars of tomato pasta sauce
1 small block of blue vein cheese
3 Table spoons of Olive Oil
Parmesan Cheese



1. Chop off the white stalks from the silver beet. Place in a pot and pour a jug full of boiling water over the silver beet and cover. Leave until you have finished the next stage.
2. In an oven dish, place the cannelloni after stuffing half each individual cannelloni with ream cheese and blue vein cheese.
3. Drain the silver beet. Add the cashew nuts and olive oil and use a stick blender to turn into a silver beet pesto.
4. Stuff into the remaining half of each cannelloni and place back into the oven dish.
5. Cover the stuffed cannelloni with the tomato pasta sauce.
6. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the top.
7. Cover with tin foil and cook at 180 degrees celsius for 20min.

This is a vegetarian dish that everyone will like because cream cheese is the best. If you are not into blue cheese, drop it. It is still yummy. Of course you could add some ham to this but then it would not be very vegetarian.

The New Mac arrives

My new MacBook has arrived. A friend bought it with her from the US where I bought it. It is a refurbished model which means I get a new model but with $700 off the price tag when compared to NZ prices.

My first impressions were not good. I cleared everything off the disk and partitioned it (I always like to have my documents separate from the OS and Applications). I installed everything and used the Migration Assistant to move my stuff from my old PowerBook. This last step proved fatal and resulted in many of the applications not working and the machine throwing errors. I gave up and reformatted the OS/Applications partition and reinstalled and manually migrated my stuff. This has been successful.

I had also bought 2 X 1Gb memory boards to upgrade the new MacBook from www.toshcomputers.com. They are an NZ company that competes against mainstream MAC sellers. I got a really good deal on these boards. Only NZ$50... for two!!! However one of them turned out to be dud and for the mean time I only have 1.5GB instead of the 2Gb I am after.

So... some initial impressions:

>It is pretty fast
>The screen is really nice
>I don't mind the changed keyboard
>Having the built in camera is very cool
>The magsafe is very good
>There is a sharp edge to the computer which digs into you when you type. I don't like this and am tempted to take to it with a piece of sand paper
>OS X 10.5 is ok. I guess I will get use to the new look but there is nothing that would sell me on it compared to 10.4. I certainly won't be going out and buying a family pack for my other MACs
>Office 2004 runs more lowly than my PowerBook. This is because it is not an Universal App and runs in an emulation. It does have an nicer look however.
>Frontrow is awaresome. Enough to make anyone switch to a MAC.
>It is lighter than my PowerBook and does not feel quite as robust.

So... so far I am pretty neutral. I think the real test will come when I do my first sermon with it and use Keynotes cool effects. Then we will see how good it is.